Preludes (before dawn)
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: Slash- in which people love and love in return; in which love is sometimes not returned; in which the meanings of death & virginity are pondered; in which the morning has not risen quite yet.


Preludes (before dawn) By: ShinigamiForever  
  
The people in here are: Harry, Draco, Seamus, Dean, Ron, Percy, Blaise, Tom, Lucius, Severus, Sirius, and Remus. The pairings are (*takes deep breath*): Harry/Draco, Ron/Harry, Seamus/Dean, Percy/Blaise, Lucius/Severus, Lucius/Tom (but barely touched on), Lucius/James (barely touched on), Severus/Remus, Sirius/Remus. Whew. Yes, Lucius is like a slut. These are placed out of order, so guess who is who. Some are actually prettty hard to figure out, some quite easy. Each part is 144 words long.  
  
I. I don't go for the alcohol. I go for the forgetfulness that it brings. The mass of people moving in and out. Sometimes, a blond head will pop out, and I will crane my neck to see the face. Never him. Even if they do have the high anorexic cheekbones, the sharp pointed teeth, it's never him. Because he would never come here. If there is someone I regret, something I want back, it would be him. His right back pocket where he used to slip his hand in is where he keeps his heart, and he won't give it back. I want it back, but he insists on keeping it, and placing it on his raw skin as a balm on frosty days where the night is too cold for graves. My liquor stained fingertips leave puddles of liquid on the scarred tabletop.  
  
II. There is a patch of paint missing from your office wall. It's true. That was the spot of wall that your head first bumped against when we touched bodies as one religious object would touch another treasure: gentle, reverent, quiet. So cliché, thirty minutes before a meeting where you would doodle diagrams on the boards that would magically squiggle the way you would want them, hours spent with you watching me discreetly over your spectacles, the sage wise men of the Ministry nodding along to the music of your voice. All the while I am jotting down illegible notes. There we go. One day, I'll come back, and I'll scratch our names there, so this little piece of history will be carved in this office forever. Maybe another pair of lovers will come back and kiss each other in the echo of our memories.  
  
III. Though he is dark like the night, he is not as cold and indifferent, although at times he seems apathetically upset, if that could be possible. He is not upset at something; he is upset because he can be unsettled. I watch him sleep, creeping towards his bedside like a thief, to steal away his dreams and nightmares, bottled up inside of him. He holds everything in, holds it so tight that like a soda bottle, it fizzes away into nothing. Once he is open, he will never be closed nor open again, and I allow him to stay closed, even though I am longing for a taste of what he is like on the inside, not what the label puts him down as. A few more sporadic minutes and the dawn will rise. He wakes with the dawn, the light fringing his eyelids.  
  
IV. Your shadow, your tail, your sequel. I follow you in the empty hallways, and please don't laugh at the oddity of this situation. What is he to you, no more than a lover? And what am I? A friend? Is he so important the in the mornings and nights you must follow each kiss with the simple slow motion of a delirious mind while I regard you from the other side of the table with the emptiness scrawled like his handwriting across my face? I practice my lines to my pillow during the hiatus of your visits, muttering words no one will hear, least of all you. You found me that once, gorged on chocolate frogs, and you tried to free my hand from the grasp on the pillow. You don't understand. I held so tightly because that pillow was supposed to be you.  
  
V. Does one smoke because he is upset, or does one smoke because the smoke is upset? Or does that make any sense at all? I believe that the beautiful madness of dreams make so much more sense then the subtle madness of reality. You must understand this. How else do you make reason of the chaotic ripple of waves, or the touch of an acoustic guitar, or those languages you run over your tongue with the relish of wine? Do you remember back in the days of school, when you were young and fresh but already old with the lines of inner peace, and do you remember first days of everything? The spring days with breezes blowing through the office windows, or your cuff buttons loose in the summer. Or is it just my sheer insanity, reaching for the only island of solidity: you?  
  
VI. Tea on murky nights before dawn. You don't give anything but tea. Not coffee, just the pallid liquid that reflects your eyes, because you like the way it calms you, and coffee makes you jitterish with the need to obey your bestial instincts and flee. There are the scratch marks where I last hit you with the need to bring you back. I feel you slowly slipping away. Your claw hand against the plaster, trying to dig holes where your nails rest. No amount of tea seems to calm you down, even though the steam is as inviting as an embrace, and there is lemon. Stop watching the night sky. What is inevitable is inevitable. Midnight scatters memories and common sense. A sun the color of your tea starts to rise. All I will remember of this night is a slice of bitter lemon.  
  
VII. The window panes are laughing at me in the dark, the stars as their teeth and they are crooked, in need of sentimental repair. The books of the bookcase are lined with dust, and no hand has touched them for ages upon ages, since years ago, when Draco built a building out of the old ones and out of a book popped a picture, a picture of a young man dressed in Gryffindor Quidditch robes with a green piece of grass dangling from his lips, and it is old with too much memory attached to it. Diaries of lurid stories, old textbooks, things of no importance to anyone else but me. The scent of cigarette smoke from a boy with long fingers, the musty mist of dungeons, iron taste of bitten lips. Those were the days. What wouldn't I give to go back.  
  
VIII. If we were Greeks, we would be Alexander and his lover Hephaestion. But we have not the power nor that acceptance. Let it be said. I do not want to be that boy leader with his soldier lover flanking him. I love whom I love for the fact that he is who he is, and I will not deter from the truth: we are frightened by what we do not understand. I love him with my life. Let others weep at my choice, let others mourn for the loss of one so clean and pure. I am of my free will. He beckons, he does not command, and I follow willingly, devotedly. Let others pretend otherwise. Let others fabricate lies about us. Let others doubt. I do not. I believe. It is on this ground of belief that the seed of truth is sown.  
  
IX. This is to you. I'd like to say, I know that in the mornings you wake to watch me. I listen for the rustle of your sheets, as much of an alarm as the Peeping Tom of the sky, the sun. You are not silent or noisy, but I am tuned to the movements of your cyclone. In the mornings, though I feign sleep, I listen to your breathing, and feel the roaming gaze of your eyes. In some ways, I wish you would land your lips on my eyelids as if you were a god. But it is you who worships me like a god, undeserving as I am. Your dreams were never pleasant, and Morpheus was never kind. Maybe Eros will be kinder, sporting his gold tipped bow, and doting on your eyes the fake sleep of lovers and fools, like us.  
  
X. I count the days, hours, minutes, seconds. The units of time that are so small, but mean so much to me, to me, do you understand? One sixteenth of a second may be the difference between somebody's death and somebody's life. Like him. One small fraction of time has made the difference between me being able to say his name. The way his hair glistened in the moonlight and bloodshed, as if he wanted to understand what Artemis, Apollo's fair sister, was singing on that murderous night. I can shed my skin. I can shed my mind. But I cannot shed memories, I cannot lock them away and hope to come back and free them. And why not? Because there is a blood seal on that memory. There is destruction on that memory. Somewhere deep away where the healing touch of tea cannot reach.  
  
XI. The last rasping breaths of life slowly slip away into dawn's throat. In the indifference of an awakening drunk, I watch it from my window, the ice of the room slipping into my veins. Morning is new and cold like a key in my hand, a key to open doors better stayed closed; family doors, perhaps, as I alone attempt to climb mountains left to crumble. So I am thrown out. Cast out without a blanket for warmth, and yet I am not cold, for the arms I return to on frosted nights like this are warm, always warm. Warm as the red of his soul, as I am green. I never did believe in Romeo and Juliet, only the first few lines: Two households, both alike in dignity/ In fair Verona, where we lay our scene/ From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.  
  
XII. Greece. With statues of fallen grace and stolen gods. Here I am, the summer night sultry with wine, and I will be but one more person among the throng of people searching for a reason to be here or there. Strange. I can live a history by myself, summon the secrets out of the dark with a word of my mouth, and yet in a crowd I am still just another warm human body to rub elbows with you. Let me play hide and seek. What is murder but (I can run faster than you, and with a blindfold too!) the ultimate destruction of virginity? It is sex and love that can only be taken once. So what if I have killed people? With their blood on my hands, I have loved so many people. So many people. People who will never love again.  
  
A/N: The answers are: I. Severus (could be confused with Harry), II. Blaise (ah, only recognizable to the HO folk), III. Seamus, IV. Ron, V. Percy (see note about Blaise), VI. Sirius, VII. Lucius, VIII. Harry, IX. Dean, X. Remus, XI. Draco, XII. Tom (my favorite). Thank you, Amalin, for pointing out the little mistakes. You're the best. ^^ 


End file.
